Iceland memories: It was getting late at the Minni-Mástanga farmhouse. We’d spent the day driving sheep home from the oldest sheep pens in Iceland. We’d spent the evening sharing a meal with the whole family (parents, six kids, grandkids and more). The only person we didn’t really talk with was this guy, Vilhjálmur Guðmundsson, eldest…
A jewel of the north. Ice from the Vatnajökull glacier that has made its way, over thousands of years, to rest on Iceland’s black sand. We are homeward bound. Photo Eric Guth
Just another roadside pull off where you can let the scenery blow your mind and expand your heart. We’ve been here two weeks now; we’re getting used to this kind of thing. (Oh, and just down the road you can see some cows . . . with a gigantic glacier in the background.) Photo Eric…
East Iceland, you are a beauty. We drove through Djúpivogur and kept going. I wandered the wetland to spy on a herd of swans, then we took off down a gravel runway until it ran out. Sometimes, the end of the road is the right place to be. Photo Eric Guth
(Part 1 of 2) “As you see, there is nothing here,” says Siggeir Stefánsson. “It is beautiful, but there is no special landscape you can’t see somewhere else.” In ten or twenty years time, this fjord in Iceland’s northeast corner could be transformed into an international container port with a wharf over six kilometers long….
(Post 2 of 2) Siggeir Stefánsson thinks about the future and the possibility of turning a nearby fjord into a deepwater container port when much of Iceland has turned toward tourism. Siggeir’s town was approached by a German engineering company with this large scale project in mind. “When this idea was starting, are you able…
(Post 1 of 3) Mission control at the Ísfélag fish processing plant in Þorshöfn, Iceland. The plant runs 24 hours a day during the fall to keep up with the mackerel and herring pouring in. We are here to meet this man, first to learn about his day job and then to witness his dreams…
(Post 2 of 3) We’ve donned robes, caps, and new shoes (that’s them, bottom right), and we’ve survived the hand washer and boot scrubber to experience the cold, wet, and clean world of the processing plant. I didn’t know that mackerel were so beautiful. Siggeir shows us the flesh and explains how the high quality…
(Post 3 of 3) Every box is full of fish. They come in off the trawlers, fresh from the sea, and they leave by ship too, boxed for market. 15,000-20,000 tonnes of fish per year roll through this warehouse: capelin, cod, pollock, mackerel, herring, lumpfish. Frozen in a world-class, carefully calibrated computer and off to…
(Post 1 of 3) We’ve made it to Þorshöfn in Iceland’s northeast corner, and we’ve left the tourist shops behind. This community survives on fish, and the first step is to take them out of the sea. Elsewhere, we’ve seen men hand-baiting their long lines, but not here. The Sigurður was brand new in July…